pucar Posted August 6, 2007 Posted August 6, 2007 HII made one of my first aerial shells but i have some problems...I dont have fuse and i cant buy it... So i made some spolletes, the problem that the retard is too long like 8 seconds!!! Could someone tell me how to do 2 seconds retard spolletes...The other problem was that with my 1inch canister shell that weight 22g, I put 6 grams of lifting powder, theres the vid of the lifting bp so you can see ...Well the shell only went 2 metres high and then explode 8seconds later in the ground... as the spollete wwas wrong made...Could some one tell me how much lifting powder i need to put... This is the vif of my lifting This are my spolletes
pudidotdk Posted August 6, 2007 Posted August 6, 2007 First off, your pulverone is too slow, it needs to go "pfoof" to be able to lift anything. If your spolettes delay is too long, ram it shorter, but remember to test the spolette before you fire a shell with it!For example if need 4 seconds of delay and you rammed 2" in the tube and your delay was 8 second, just ram 1" in the tube. (You won't need 4 seconds it was only an example, more like 3) I make my spolettes as following:http://pyrotechnics.no-ip.org/files/spolette.jpg
crazyboy25 Posted August 9, 2007 Posted August 9, 2007 I think its like a double break shell, they had a couple on a Nova movie on fireworks. hi im back from vacation and i got a few questions first of all i was wondering if anyone had that nova video online or knew where i could see it. also i finished my first aerial shell which was a 4" (i will get pictures) but i probabbly wont be able to test it for a while. in the meantime i found out i made my stars wrong so this will reeallly be a t4est of my lift. i have also been wanting to make reeper silver for i while now, what a coincidence! i also had some questiopns about commercial fireworks for the first time in my life i bought real fireworks not "safe and sane" in new hampshire where they are legal to buy but not set off. needless to say i bought $47 woth of fireworks including 3 cakes 2 buzzbombs 4 roman candles 1 2" aerial shell oh did i mention it was 50% off thank god i did pay $90 for em. anyway several of the cakes and roman candeles had regular 1/2" tubes but couldn't have been stars some cakes shot red and green stars that burst into cone shape bursts and the roman candles short up screaming then exploded with 10 go-getters and 20 VERY loud dragon eggs how did they do it?
Mumbles Posted August 10, 2007 Posted August 10, 2007 For the cakes: They were color to shell cakes. They have a tube, say .45" OD and .375" ID, about 1.5" long with a clay nipple rammed in about 1/2" or so with a hole through the center. A piece of probably cheap chinese fuse is placed through the hole, and the shallow side of the tube is filled with star comp. The other side is filled with some microstars, BP, and flash, and capped off. After the color comp dries it's ready. It shoots up burning the color, when it reaches the fuse the fire is transfered into the larger cavity, where it explodes into a little burst. For the roman candles: It is probably something similar, but with whistle comp in place of the color comp, and flying fish fuse(the things you though were go getters), and dragon egs instead of the stars in the burst cavity. The whistle cavity may have been much longer than the burst cavity as well in this case. As far as the spolettes go. Either your powder totally sucks, or you have a 3" increment of BP rammed. From the sounds of it with the lifting situation, I am going to go with column A on this one. Long story short, make better powder, get better charcoal. The mass for lifting is probably just fine, if not a bit overkill. As far as the PGI goes, I have been there and back. I caught the opening day of competition and the opening show. It's amazing how easily one can walk right in when looking at a PGI bulletin pretending to find your way around. I almost got into the show free too.
Jason Posted August 11, 2007 Posted August 11, 2007 I have a question about smaller shells: I have a couple 1" shells that i'm using as bottle rocket headers, I tested 3 out last night but when they exploded, the starts just kind of fell out, instead of being projected. Is using a flash/whistle booster better with these small shells? I was going to use the Kno3/Al/S formula, because perchlorate reacts with sulfur. Any help would be appreciated.
pudidotdk Posted August 11, 2007 Posted August 11, 2007 Smaller shells needs a harder break to open proberly, either using stronger break charge (such as using a booster) or paste the shell better. If using paper hemis, paste more layers.If using plastic hemis, wrap some fibre strapping tape around the shel.
Mumbles Posted August 12, 2007 Posted August 12, 2007 In my experience, small shells normally require a pretty strong break charge. In my smaller pupadelles I use as inserts, I break them with 4FA mixed in with the stars until full. I have also used 6:1 KP on hulls, with some granular KP added, and about 1/2 tsp of copper oxychloride catalyzed whistle mixed in amongst the stars, and that gave a fairly good effect too. The ones with BP are 1.25" ID, and the ones with the KP and whistle were 1.75" ID.
Jason Posted August 12, 2007 Posted August 12, 2007 Thanks guys, I figured id need a stronger break. Unfortunately i'm using newspaper charcoal right now, it's not very fast, but i'll see what I can do.
lnstantkarma Posted August 21, 2007 Posted August 21, 2007 I am beginning to use the veline star compositions and I can't decide what solvent to use, the stars use 4%dextrin, 15%parlon, and 9% red gum. So thats water and acetone but I would rather not waste my composition finding out what works best. Does anyone have any advice?
Mumbles Posted August 21, 2007 Posted August 21, 2007 They're designed for water. If they have dextrin in them, they are designed to be water bound. Theres no point in adding dextrin if you're going to bind the star with alcohol.
flying fish Posted August 21, 2007 Posted August 21, 2007 What about a solution of water and acetone in the hopes of activating both the dextrin and the parlon? Or would that interfere with the binding?
Mumbles Posted August 21, 2007 Posted August 21, 2007 It's going to interfere somewhat with the binding, and it wont work. By the time you get the concentration of acetone high enough to solvate the parlon to any appeciably degree, the dextrin will be all but insoluble. Try using alcohol and water to get a bit of the red gum perhaps. 25% alcohol still seems to bind the dex pretty good. Its going to be hard to activate 2 binders with 2 different solvents. A 50-50 mix will activate the dex and the Red gum at least, but the result will be inferior to either binder on it's own.
ULTRABUF Posted August 23, 2007 Posted August 23, 2007 I lit off my 3" Reeper Silver shell like a week ago, but the time fuse (visco) didn't take fire. So I found the shell and put a nice big glob of prime on it this time, and now I need to make some more quickmatch to refuse some lift to it. So I should relight the shell next week sometime. I did light off a nice 2.25" star mine and a 1.75" aerial salute that functioned nicely. I'll try to post the vids later, the camera is dead right now.
crazyboy25 Posted August 23, 2007 Posted August 23, 2007 wow what a coincidence i am planning on using my reeper silver in a 4" aerial shell but i wont be able to launch til October reeper silvers are great easily lit nice thick silver tails (i tested them in a star gun) i highly recommend them.
ULTRABUF Posted August 23, 2007 Posted August 23, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kqkszIw8uATheres the aerial salute.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjV0ijvwAgsAnd the starmine. I have prefire pics, if anyone wants to see them I'll shrink them so they can be posted.
k1ley4evr Posted August 24, 2007 Posted August 24, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kqkszIw8uATheres the aerial salute.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjV0ijvwAgsAnd the starmine. I have prefire pics, if anyone wants to see them I'll shrink them so they can be posted. good job, please post prefire pics. How much lift did you use for the 1.75?
ULTRABUF Posted August 24, 2007 Posted August 24, 2007 Hey thanks. There they are, I made a photobucket account just for you lol. http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee243/u...stinpyro010.jpghttp://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee243/u...stinpyro009.jpgAnd the aerial salute had 8 grams of lift. Maybe overkill, I used 1/6 the weight since its a small shell and they seem to need a higher ratio of lift. But I used one of those festival ball cardboard mortars for it... it didn't survive. The lift blew a large hole in the bottom of the tube and shattered half of the plastic base.
nath0r Posted August 28, 2007 Posted August 28, 2007 I managed to destroy a 2" mortar tube the other day, i was firing a 2" starmine. I think my problem is an overkill on stars, i tend to fill the tube full of stars and im guessing that the sheer ammount of stars just act with the lift to produce a very loud bang and reck the mortar. i've got a video of the test, i'm gonna use fewer stars next time to try and fine tune my mine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVVRMgOhNOk Sorry for the language, it was such a loud explosion, the mortar had a plastic base before, it was nowhere to be found after.
Mumbles Posted August 28, 2007 Posted August 28, 2007 I think it was probably just a base failure. You said you were using a plastic base. These tend to be attached by hot glue, and maybe some wooden sticks. Even if they were attached by nails or screws, the plastic would still give way before the mortar truely "exploded". I would suggest using a wooden pluged tube reinforced with good screws or bolts. But yes, too much lift or stars on top would cause this. Well, not neccesarily too much for a normallly reinforced mortar, but too much for the poor plastic bases.
nath0r Posted August 28, 2007 Posted August 28, 2007 Yeah, thats probably another factor that didnt help, i'm going to build some nice sturdy racks later this week to hopefully make my mortars more durable and last longer than 1 launch. Thanks for the advice Mumbles. *Edit* here is a picture just so you can get a better idea of how many stars to how much lift i used. i have used far fewer stars in my mine i plan on firing tonight, ill let you know how it goes. http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/6989/starminean2.jpg
crazyboy25 Posted August 28, 2007 Posted August 28, 2007 are you liscenced if so fine but if not all that labeling isn't a good idea.
nath0r Posted August 28, 2007 Posted August 28, 2007 yeah, i know its not the best idea to label my fireworks like shown, but my parents had asked to see one of my devices so i thought i would go that little bit further to put some warning labels on. i don't usually label my fireworks, only really the size and effect.
qwezxc12 Posted August 29, 2007 Posted August 29, 2007 Does anyone want to host the video of my show? I edited it down to 5:36 long...it's a 38Mb .wmv file. Please PM me. I might be able to ftp out of work during the day (not sure it the firewall will block me or not). http://pyrotechnics.no-ip.org/ bounces it...don't know why - they state a 100Mb size limit, but the admin message says the file's too big. If not, I'll try rapidshare. Thx.
pudidotdk Posted August 29, 2007 Posted August 29, 2007 qwezxc, try www.yousendit.com, when sent you will get a link to a page where you can download the movie. The only downside is that the link will only work for 7 days, but either way you won't be having problems to send it to whoever might host it (I think I might have some free space on flashnet.dk)
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